Let's start out with facts. South Indians (at least the majority of them), and in particular the Tamil vegetarian community have one of the lightest fat diets in the world, low in fat (high in simple carbs of course). And every aunty-uncle couple I have met has some combination of diabetes and cholesterol between them. Of course this has spread beyond the realm of aunties and uncles now to ages very uncomfortably close to my own. (We'll leave the discussion of whether I am an aunty myself to another time).
Yet, every reaction to the high cholesterol diagnosis has been to lower fat further, go to fat-free milk, remove whatever ghee was remaining, dismissing the tadka, etc.... you get the gist. I recently read in several places that Indians have among the highest rates of heart disease anywhere. Sally Fallon's "Nourishing Traditions" quotes from another study that North Indians who eat 17 times as much fat as South Indians have 7 times less heart disease! Both of these indicate that South Indians have the highest burden of heart disease in the entire world (yes, not the red meat eaters of Europe and North America, not the only-meat-eating Inuits, but the largely vegetarian South Indians). And while I don't have a reference for this statement by itself, I can state just by anecdotes that this is probably true.
So, do we have all of our nutritional science wrong? Is a low-fat vegetarian diet not the magic antidote we have been chasing? Well, from a few limited interviews of my mother and aunts, I gathered that in the olden days, "Madrasis" didn't really die that much of heart disease. My mother remembers several natural deaths. I can't say that I have seen even one (North or South, East or West). Sally Fallon, to prove her point against low-fat diets piles a whole lot of adjectives on "Madrasis" - puny, ailing, life span of 20 years (!!) and so on. A lot of this is from quite-suspect anecdotes by some pukka-sahibs in the early 1900s- suspect because I don't currently know very many puny and ailing Madrasis (oh, how I passionately hate this term, and the abuse that it has endured), and I won't even deign to comment on the life-span.
The point being that our traditional diet in our traditional climate didn't hurt us too bad. But that diet has changed. Our rice used to be hulled, not polished (making it a slightly more complex carb with some fiber than the ultra-polished white rice we ingest now), our oils were cold-pressed by chekku maadu-s (and didn't potentially oxidize at the high-heats that solvent-extracted oils are subjected to), our milk was raw, hormone-free, non-homogenized, and our vegetables and fruits were organic. Also this food gelled well with our super hot summers and non-existent winters.
Cholesterol, it turns out, is less of a final problem, and more of an indicator. It (LDL) is produced by our livers as a repair agent, to fix inflamed tissue, such as in arteries. High cholesterol is therefore an indicator of high inflammation, or damaged tissue. It also has been shown that more than 85% of our cholesterol is produced by our liver (as opposed to 15% from food), making reducing our diet fat quite useless in reducing cholesterol. Our concern should be more about why the tissue is damaged in the first place rather than lowering the cholesterol (which no doubt frees up clogs in our arteries, but leaves them damaged anyway). One of the unambiguous factors that have correlated with tissue damage is high blood sugar. The other one (although opinions differ on this one) is a diet deficient in fat soluble vitamins and high in vegetable oils.
What am I trying to say? Just that blindly obeying the dictats of modern medicine, that are based on a few years of possibly highly skewed research, has led us to a more unhealthy lifestyle very far from our roots. Tamil Brahmins reducing fat in their diet is the most extreme diet measure I have heard of. We know that people have lived long and healthy a certain way in a certain place. It is easiest to return even partially to that life, than to follow a largely unknown path, especially one that has proven over the years to be quite useless. Pass the ghee and the coconut oil, please. And make them organic and extra-virgin, while you are at it.
Yet, every reaction to the high cholesterol diagnosis has been to lower fat further, go to fat-free milk, remove whatever ghee was remaining, dismissing the tadka, etc.... you get the gist. I recently read in several places that Indians have among the highest rates of heart disease anywhere. Sally Fallon's "Nourishing Traditions" quotes from another study that North Indians who eat 17 times as much fat as South Indians have 7 times less heart disease! Both of these indicate that South Indians have the highest burden of heart disease in the entire world (yes, not the red meat eaters of Europe and North America, not the only-meat-eating Inuits, but the largely vegetarian South Indians). And while I don't have a reference for this statement by itself, I can state just by anecdotes that this is probably true.
So, do we have all of our nutritional science wrong? Is a low-fat vegetarian diet not the magic antidote we have been chasing? Well, from a few limited interviews of my mother and aunts, I gathered that in the olden days, "Madrasis" didn't really die that much of heart disease. My mother remembers several natural deaths. I can't say that I have seen even one (North or South, East or West). Sally Fallon, to prove her point against low-fat diets piles a whole lot of adjectives on "Madrasis" - puny, ailing, life span of 20 years (!!) and so on. A lot of this is from quite-suspect anecdotes by some pukka-sahibs in the early 1900s- suspect because I don't currently know very many puny and ailing Madrasis (oh, how I passionately hate this term, and the abuse that it has endured), and I won't even deign to comment on the life-span.
The point being that our traditional diet in our traditional climate didn't hurt us too bad. But that diet has changed. Our rice used to be hulled, not polished (making it a slightly more complex carb with some fiber than the ultra-polished white rice we ingest now), our oils were cold-pressed by chekku maadu-s (and didn't potentially oxidize at the high-heats that solvent-extracted oils are subjected to), our milk was raw, hormone-free, non-homogenized, and our vegetables and fruits were organic. Also this food gelled well with our super hot summers and non-existent winters.
Cholesterol, it turns out, is less of a final problem, and more of an indicator. It (LDL) is produced by our livers as a repair agent, to fix inflamed tissue, such as in arteries. High cholesterol is therefore an indicator of high inflammation, or damaged tissue. It also has been shown that more than 85% of our cholesterol is produced by our liver (as opposed to 15% from food), making reducing our diet fat quite useless in reducing cholesterol. Our concern should be more about why the tissue is damaged in the first place rather than lowering the cholesterol (which no doubt frees up clogs in our arteries, but leaves them damaged anyway). One of the unambiguous factors that have correlated with tissue damage is high blood sugar. The other one (although opinions differ on this one) is a diet deficient in fat soluble vitamins and high in vegetable oils.
What am I trying to say? Just that blindly obeying the dictats of modern medicine, that are based on a few years of possibly highly skewed research, has led us to a more unhealthy lifestyle very far from our roots. Tamil Brahmins reducing fat in their diet is the most extreme diet measure I have heard of. We know that people have lived long and healthy a certain way in a certain place. It is easiest to return even partially to that life, than to follow a largely unknown path, especially one that has proven over the years to be quite useless. Pass the ghee and the coconut oil, please. And make them organic and extra-virgin, while you are at it.
